Water's Edge

by G R Jordan

  The cox shouted back from his seat at the front. “There’s something on the beach, sir. We can’t go that close but we can launch the Y-boat out to the shore. But I don’t want my crew going ashore if there’s going to be violence. We’re not trained for that sort of thing.”

  “Of course not, sir,” said Macleod. “Can you get a few of us onto the beach? I’m happy for your crew to remain in the boat until we make sure it’s safe. If they stay in the water but close, in case we need to retreat.”

  The cox nodded and as they brought the lifeboat close, the crew prepared the smaller boat at the rear of the vessel. Macleod and Hope were deposited into the boat and with two crew they made their way to the beach. As they got closer, Macleod could see red stains beside a body. It was a large figure, a male figure. As the boat reached the sandy shore, Hope jumped out from the boat ahead of him and ran up to the body. Macleod was somewhat clumsier and by the time he had cleared the water Hope was already beside the man.

  “It’s Macaulay, sir, and he’s been cut across his throat, and a lot more afterwards.”

  Macleod looked around but there was no one else. He saw some remains of a campfire, some empty tins of food, as if someone had been here. But no sign of the woman. Damn!

  Chapter 24

  Hope was walking around the makeshift camp site looking for anything that might help. Watching her from the water’s edge, Macleod was observing slumped shoulders and a touch of dejection that was far from the woman who had leapt out of the boat. The mobile phone did not work here and Macleod had relayed instructions via the lifeboat and the Coastguard back to Allinson who should be organising some vessels and more officers to reach the site.

  Tucked away in a small loch, the beach site had a small area of sand and then a rocky ledge leading up to a small patch of moorland. The ground seemed difficult for Macleod saw Hope stumble a few times. Walking the shoreline, Macleod looked for any marks or indications of another boat having beached but the sand was perfect. There were also no footprints near the water except for the mess they had made coming ashore.

  A crewman had thrown up on seeing the corpse and Macleod stepped around the sickly mess that was touching the tide. The poor guy was still in a touch of shock and Macleod had suggested he return to the lifeboat and they get someone else to shuttle the remaining officers onto the beach. With the last of the officers now ashore, the two person crew in the small boat were sat on the beach trying to look elsewhere.

  “Sir,” shouted Hope.

  Macleod looked around and then spotted her red hair up on the grass beyond the beach. He skirted well around the body and clambered up to the grass area where he saw Hope pointing into a gap in the rock face beyond. Joining her, he let her take the lead in getting onto her knees and entering the small gap in the rocks. Watching her trim backside disappear, he wondered how deep this entry into the rock face was and got onto his knees to follow Hope.

  The entry was dark inside and he saw a single, small, directed light ahead beyond his colleague. But he could see little else and proceeded slowly, hands out in front, checking for loose rock or jutting pieces. The space to crawl in was narrow and Macleod had his head down feeling his way along. Then his head banged into the backside he had seen disappear inside and his hands reached forward to ascertain the lie of the cave. Unfortunately his hand rested briefly on Hope’s rear before he could work out there was a severe lack of space.

  “There’s a den up here of sorts,” said Hope, ignoring his scrabbling hands, “and there’s some roll mats, all jammed together. A rucksack and a notebook. A thick one. Come up and see.”

  Hope flashed the torch down at her body as she forced herself to one side of the tiny cave. Macleod saw the tight gap ahead and wormed his way forward but could not help brushing up to his colleague the whole way. It felt unseemly and he could smell her subtle perfume this close. It was a delicate scent and extremely pleasant but he tried to focus on the task ahead. As his face met inches from Hope’s face, she swung round the torch leaving them in darkness and illuminating the small area ahead.

  The rucksack against the wall looked full. Some crumbs of food and a few empty cans of a cheap beer were also lying crushed up. But there were photos stuck onto the wall above the little den. Sweet, almost innocent photos of Sara and her lover together, arm in arm or wrapped in each other.

  “This was their place then,” said Hope. “I guess they could come here and be themselves away from other people.”

  “Yes but they brought someone else here, or else how did Macaulay get here? Someone told him about it, set him up and I reckon it’s Marie Smith. They brought Marie Smith out here at some point.”

  “No,” replied Hope, “not to here, it’s too precious. She made Marie pay for sex. This is not the place you would bring someone like that. There’s something wrong in that theory.”

  Macleod tried to reach forward for the notebook beside the rucksack and slipped from his delicate balance down into Hope resting up against her in a rather compromised position. Realising he had gotten himself into a poor position he quickly apologised and tried to adjust but that only made his position even closer so he could feel her body touching his.

  “If this wasn’t the middle of a murder case, this would be funny,” said Hope. She let out an inadvertent giggle.

  Macleod let a wry laugh go as well. “I’m going to extract myself,” he advised, “and then if you bring out the rucksack and the notebook, we’ll see if there’s anything of importance in there. Get a photo first of course. Do you have any gloves?”

  “No,” said Hope, “I didn’t put any in when I changed. Have you?”

  “Yes,” said Macleod, “in my left trouser pocket, which I’m lying on.” He tried to shift and although his trouser pocket came out from under him, he also shifted again finding his nose touching Hope’s. “I’ll get out and throw them in, shall I?”

  “I’ve a free arm,” said Hope and Macleod felt a hand working down his chest and then tracing a line to his trousers before a hand rummaged inside and pulled out some gloves. In his mind he was laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. Not since his wife had he been this close to a woman, so close the bodies really touched, at several parts. And that smell up close, it was intoxicating. I need to get out, he thought, but I missed this. She really is... Macleod left his thoughts and decided to move. Getting out produced another farce of positioning and when he accidentally placed a hand on her bottom in trying to go backwards, Hope actually joked she thought he was doing this deliberately. He prayed he was not.

  Adjusting himself as he exited the cave, Macleod stood and looked again on the scene around him. Macaulay still lay on the beach, his throat slashed. So if Marie Smith had come here, how did she know and what was her aim? The young woman was not here. Did Marie Smith find Macaulay? Did she set him up? Was the young woman here and Smith now has her?

  “Sir, can you grab the bag?” Hope’s feet were sticking out of the cave entrance and a small brown rucksack emerged past them. Taking the bag and setting it behind him, Macleod knelt by the entrance and then received a notebook from Hope. He waited until she had back peddled herself out far enough to accept a hand and pull herself up.

  “Tight in there. But cosy if it’s the person you want to be with,” said Hope. “I could imagine it being a sweet escape from the world, way out here and somewhere to cuddle up with the storms outside.”

  “Yes, of course,” replied Macleod. I can still smell the perfume. He turned away and knelt down with the notebook opening it up on a nearby rock. He really had missed the closeness.

  With the notebook open, he flipped through the pages. Inside were a few pictures he recognised. One had Macaulay asleep on a bed. The colour of the covers matched the duvet spread in the upstairs apartment of the massage parlour. There were pictures of Macaulay’s associates too. Again asleep on the bed. There were others too. Men of an older age, never looking younger than around forty.

  “A customer record
for bribery?” asked Hope.

  “An investigative log, McGrath. She was looking for a middle aged man. I think she was sleeping with men to find out more about them. Looking for a certain kind of person. One who having bedded her mother a long time ago would then fancy the daughter. It’s sick.”

  “But effective. She tracked her man. He killed her.”

  “No, Hope, she killed her.” Macleod kept turning the pages until he came across the sleeping face of Marie Smith. “I’m not sure Sara Hewitt actually knew but she suspected her involvement. Hence she took her as a paying client.”

  Hope blew out a sigh. “You’d have to be so driven to sleep with people you thought might have had something to do with your Mother’s disappearance.”

  “Yes you would, but she learnt something of that from her mother I presume. It seems she played about a bit. I wonder how much Sara really knew before she died.” Macleod had seen this young woman as a slut, a promiscuous woman who did what she wanted for her own gain. But now he saw the driven vehicle of righteousness seeking what had happened to her mother, doing whatever to achieve that.

  “Do you think our young woman was here?” asked Hope.

  “No. Or at least she never revealed herself. If she did I would think she’d be dead and a tableau set up to have us believe Macaulay killed her. I doubt Smith thought we would know about this place. And when someone did stumble across it, the young girl could be blamed.”

  “Unless that’s the point,” said Hope. “If our young woman was here and Marie Smith has taken her. If the young woman disappears and Macaulay is found, then Smith would be off the hook as we would think the girl did it. Probably in self-defence when Macaulay attacked her. Maybe she has her, boss.”

  “And needs to get rid of her quietly. That’s a possibility, definitely, we have to check it. And she never saw this notebook, or the bag. Or at least I doubt it. She’d have removed herself from it surely. Maybe.”

  “What she did or didn’t know can wait, sir. If I’m right...”

  “Yes, McGrath. Let’s get back to the lifeboat and get moving, I need to contact Allinson. If Marie Smith came here I doubt it was on foot. She’s not strong enough to carry someone out to the road, it’s miles away. But she did take a hire car. So where did she go?”

  “The lifeboat, let’s ask the coxswain, he’ll know the area.”

  Together they strode back to the small y-boat and called to the crewmen on board to fetch them back. Macleod could see the younger crewman turning away from the sight of Macaulay on the beach. The other, however, was in a state of fascination. Macleod’s shoes and ankles got soaked as he boarded as did those of Hope. The younger crewman perked up from his rejection of the beach scene as he helped her aboard, sitting directly behind her.

  Once back on board the lifeboat, Macleod asked to speak to the cox and detailed Hope’s idea that someone may have been taken off the beach by someone else.

  “Where would they go and what sort of vessel would you need? Where would they tie up and meet up with a vehicle?”

  “Let’s look at the charts,” the man replied and took them within the cockpit to the screen plotter, the electronic charts that sat in front of the vessel’s navigator. Macleod stared without understanding as the cox and his navigator looked along what Macleod presumed were shorelines. The cox then turned to Macleod, “well, they could take a small rhib or dinghy and put alongside at a number of these little slipways. But someone would probably see them.

  “We can take a run along but you don’t know what you’re looking for. If I was going for inconspicuous, I wouldn’t be landing at any of these little slipways, we have fishermen using them most days. You could ask the Coastguard to put out a broadcast but it would be so vague. I can call them and see if they have had any strange reports around here.”

  “Please do.” Macleod turned back to Hope, his face giving a frustrated air as he bit his bottom lip.

  “Sir?”

  “Needle in a haystack. The Cox says there’s a few slipways but they are pretty active and unlikely to have been used.”

  “She would need to hide out, maybe? Somewhere abandoned? Maybe not a large slipway, but somewhere where you could get the boat off the water,” said Hope.

  The cox interrupted. “Detective, the Coastguard have had nothing unusual reported. I suggest we route a little further down the loch and see what we can find. Maybe there’s something I’m missing.”

  “Again, please do,” said Macleod.

  “If you’d join me up top, we can get a better view. This way, please.” The Cox pointed the way out of the cockpit to the rear door of the craft and Macleod followed Hope out onto the rear deck. From there, the Cox took them up a small ladder onto the upper open deck where Macleod saw another set of steering apparatus and further controls.

  “Hang on to something with one hand at all times,” said the Cox. “Might get bumpy.”

  Macleod held on with two hands as the vessel swung away down the loch. His eyes glanced over at Hope who was standing like she had been on a boat all her life. Her eyes scanned the shore and Macleod decided to join her scan rather than keep looking at her.

  He felt vulnerable, like a rawness inside was exposed. The memories of the horror he endured at his wife’s death had brought up unexpected memories of intimacy in their life that he was struggling to keep down. And Hope kept bringing them to the surface every time he looked at her. Dear God, what is this? Give me control, I don’t need this now.

  And then he heard a voice. It penetrated through the splash of the boat cutting the waves. It was clear through the roar of the engines and the wind rushing past him. Yes you do, it said.

  The lifeboat tore along the loch which began to narrow. The Cox had been right and they had seen a few slipways which had small boats attached and they could have been used. Having seen Macaulay’s corpse, he had to have been dead for maybe more than six hours. Macleod needed men here in boats to go and question any loch workers or those that lived around her. But that would take time and that was not something they had the luxury of.

  “What’s that?” shouted Hope above the waves.

  “Arracaig House,” shouted the Cox, “abandoned maybe twenty years. Was a pretty house in its day but now just a ruin.”

  “Can we get close?” asked Macleod.

  “Sure.” The Cox took the lifeboat in close to the shore but stopped a little away. “I have to be careful here, don’t want to ground the lifeboat, they’re kind of expensive.”

  Macleod watched the man smile at Hope as he said this. She had a way of bringing out the little flirtations men have.

  “There!” shouted a crewwoman.

  “Where, Anna?”

  “Behind the bank with the weeds. I can see red, possible side of a dinghy. Not sure but it looks like it.”

  “Can we get in there?” asked Macleod.

  “Aye, in the y-boat, Detective.”

  “Then please, as quickly as you can.”

  A few minutes later, Macleod and Hope were with their two crewmen and heading for the sighting in the y-boat. As they got close Hope jumped out onto the bank and scrambled for the bank of weeds.

  “Yes, it’s a boat alright. Got a small outboard on it. There’s some blood in it too.”

  Macleod scrambled onto the bank, his feet sodden as he had inadvertently stepped into the water when he jumped out. “Is it fresh?”

  Hope nodded and Macleod turned to look at the ruin that was Arracaig House. He hoped he was not too late.

  Chapter 25

  Macleod motioned to the lifeboat crewmen to stay at the y-boat and joined Hope at the small dinghy she had found. There was blood on the boat but it was deposited by hands wiping as opposed to drops having been spilled. Still, it was not a good sign and Macleod indicated to Hope that they should make for the house he could see beyond the dinghy.

  There was a faint path through the moorland towards the house which stood like a grey bastion in the spongy surroundings. Fro
m his lower vantage point, Macleod could not see any roads or paths and decided to strike out as directly as he could for the building. His feet became covered in moss and that purple heather that seemed to surround the moor. Despite it being summer, he still felt a chill in his feet and had to force himself forward.

  Due to the difficulty in maintaining his footing, Macleod only glanced up at the building sporadically but he failed to see anyone at the windows. He knew anyone inside would see them coming from afar but there was no time to be stealthy, and no other way he could see across the moor. As his foot slipped down into the heather again, he felt a tap on his shoulder.

  “Sir, just across from us, the heather has been pushed down a bit, like something’s been dragged across it.”

  Staring at the patch of ground, Macleod concurred and then dragged his foot back out of the moor. He tried to quicken his pace but tripped and fell face first into the spongy, wet mass. An arm swung under his and helped pull him up.

  “Stick to firmer patches. In fact I’ll go first. Just follow me.” Hope stepped across in front of him and he found himself watching her feet, seeing them plant firmly on more solid terrain. Her long legs stretched at times in her jeans to a size of step he struggled with. Once she stopped and he reacted too slowly, causing himself to bump up against her from behind and grab her sides for purchase. Again he caught a whiff of her perfume, delicate, unlike himself.

  Without any warning his feet came upon a gravelled road and he looked up to find himself close to the house and Hope staring at the many windows. It had three floors and one of the windows on the ground floor was smashed. The guttering was hanging broken and Macleod swore he could see sections of the roof had fallen in.

  “Shall we skirt the outside or just go straight in?” asked Hope. “If they are in there, they might run off.”